


Forging Gold

by fatalism_and_villainy



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Artistic Sensibilities, Character Study, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Maglor's very Noldorin approach to music, Noldorin Academia, Valinor, Years of the Trees, some implied kinslaying at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalism_and_villainy/pseuds/fatalism_and_villainy
Summary: The development of Maglor's artistic sensibilities, up to the time of the Darkening.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	Forging Gold

Light was the focal point of his earliest memory, from before he had learned to think in terms of words like “earliest”: the light streaming through the high windows of his father’s house, refracted into thin, blinding-white shards that streaked the hardwood floors and turned them amber-gold.

He also dimly remembered the feeling of a hand on his shoulder, one of the servants come to fetch him and chastise him for being in his father’s rooms, that his father had guests who would be coming to see him, that Makalaurë needed to get out of the way. But that was a separate, adjacent memory, existing on an entirely different plane from the soft, dreamy vision of that room. The tall shelves of books and the armchairs arranged by the fireplace were all preserved in the stillness of the afternoon, and the air of the room was almost thick with the silence, with the only sign of movement or liveliness in the subtle dancing of those streaks of light.

***

At an older age, with an ear more attuned to opinion and controversy, he became conscious of the extreme degree to which boundaries and enclosed spaces were at the forefront of his people’s creative imagination.

It had not always been thus - not when they had been a wandering people, unlearned in the arts of the Valar, with little but the forest canopy and the vast expanse of sky for their roofs. But here, in the seat of paradise, scope was of the utmost consideration. Designers and architects, in the shaping of the greatest houses of Tirion, riddled them with intricate details, such that only the discerning eye could notice: tiling patterns with little shocks of color in near-hidden corners, window overhangs that were intricately painted underneath, such that they could only be seen by one standing directly below, and newel posts carved with miniature scenes that were marveled at by more observant house guests.

(This particular example was the topic of heated debate, both informally and within the academic guilds of Tirion – voices were raised in the argument that they were not a people of solitary artistry, that it was not their way to create beauty only for it to be shut away in the most elaborate houses and courtyards, reserved only for the eyes of a few. But this was the least of the scrutiny applied to craftsmanship among the Noldor.)

Throughout this preoccupation with scope and scale, with boundaries and thresholds, ran the light, ever-present in the aims of each craftsman and the shaping of the city. The windows and high arches of their sprawling palaces and pavilions were designed to accommodate its waxing and waning over the course of the day, murals were painted so as to shift in colour and highlight different details under the alternating silver and gold light, and the craft that their people most prized involved the geometric encasement of light, the shaping of angles such that it would be refracted and rebound with tenfold the intensity with which it met a surface.

(Jewels were, of course, also a sign of favour. After one of Makalaurë’s first visits to court, in which he had seen numerous lords and dignitaries beset with gems, glimmering in their movements, he mentioned to his father that it seemed as though being a conduit of light was an indicator of power – for he was certain that his father would be pleased at his powers of observation. But Fëanáro only said derisively, “Their power is a façade. They are skilled at carrying themselves with pomp and showiness, and at coating their words with splendor. But their impressiveness is borrowed from the innovators who have lent them their jewels. Only those who delve at the world’s secrets and serve in its shaping have any power worth coveting, not those who flatter and grovel.”)

***

Makalaurë, like any well-off child, was duly educated by his tutors on the nature and properties of light. It was explained to him that colour existed on a spectrum and was a result of the reflection of light from a surface; that light had no substance, yet filled a bounded space as readily as water; and that its capturing had been a central object of study among their people.

“But what of its sound?” asked Makalaurë.

“Its sound, my prince?”

“It makes a sound,” said Makalaurë stubbornly. “When you’re alone, in the late afternoon, and it is otherwise quiet, and it spills in through the windows just so. A humming sound.”

He was met with indulgent laughter. “That is merely a trick of your ears, my prince!”

But Makalaurë was insistently captivated by the marriage of light and sound that came about in particular moments, and by their shared malleability – that like the metal his father shaped, they could both be cast in a particular form with the right mold. His penchant for singing he discovered through experimenting with the differing qualities and textures of sound within his bedroom, or the vast entrance hall to his father’s house, or, during his family’s travels, in the open air, outside the confines of the city walls **.**

It was remarked among Makalaurë’s tutors that Fëanáro and Nerdanel had now managed to produce a child to match their own eccentricity.

The learning of letters came easily to Makalaurë, as he loved the accompanying scratching sound of the nib of a pen over a piece of parchment, and had willingly and diligently persisted in writing exercises just to listen. Letters had a double sound – the sound from their shaping in his mouth, and the sound from the strokes of the pen as it waltzed over the page. And from this dual meeting of sounds, somewhere between and yet outside the sketching and the speaking, he grasped the possibility of bringing forth, through sound, colour without boundary.

It was through this maelstrom of discovery that Makalaurë set about his first experimentations with poetry, compelled by the strictures of line and metre as a casing for the vibrancy of the words within. Therefore, with the inclinations of an inquisitive and precocious child inexperienced in either love or loss, he took as a subject the nature of writing in itself, and gave form to the way the words rang against each other like the wind chimes in the courtyard, the way meanings fluctuated through the subtleties of pronunciation.

His father was the only one who understood it. One afternoon he called Makalaurë into his study, as he did regularly, to inquire after his education (and likely to assess the quality of his tutors). The small, cramped room was bathed in the dwindling glow of the afternoon light, and Makalaurë stood before his father, who sat leaning against his unkempt desk. He dutifully rattled off the stages of the history of Arda, the names of the various constellations, and the various names of the sub-clans of the Noldor before his father raised a hand and stopped him.

“It’s clear that you’ve paid close attention,” said Fëanáro, his brows knitted in the manner that often implied that his praise was about to be qualified. “But the purpose of learning is not rote memorization and recitation. What can you gather for yourself from what you’ve been taught? What conclusions can you draw?”

Makalaurë hesitated for a moment. “We are very passionate about lists,” he finally said, and Fëanáro let out a wry chuckle. “We place a lot of value on dividing up events and discoveries into categories of before and after. I read that periodization is itself a matter of contention among historians, who argue that the commonly accepted categories of time are based on oversimplified ideas.”

Fëanáro nodded approvingly. “Not the sort of conclusion I was reaching for, but good. Always question the framing of what you are taught, and the paradigms of how it is taught to you. And what of your projects?”

“I have written a poem,” said Makalaurë, faltering a bit as he produced the parchment from his robes. With anyone but his father he could have rounded off the statement with a note of self-assured haughtiness, as befitting the airs of a prince coming into the role of an artist. But given that he had learned such a display from his father, he felt loath try getting away with it here.

His father’s brows lifted in interest. “You’ve brought it with you? Let’s see it.”

He deftly plucked the paper from Makalaurë’s hand and leaned back in his chair, eyes sweeping over the page with an unnerving quickness, though Makalaurë knew his father could retain an astonishing amount from a few swift moments. A new expression came over Fëanáro’s face – one not of disapproval, to Makalaurë’s relief, but of amused interest.

“Do you know what this reminds me of? The styles of poetry that used to be popular, back when I was a little older than you are.” Fëanáro set the paper down, an animated gleam forming in his eye. “There was one set of conventions then that had poets attempting to cram as many long, complicated, and obscure words into a line as possible, while still maintaining the meter. Not quite the same as this – and this was before writing was widespread, so it was mainly an oratory practice - but similar. Pushing the boundaries of form itself. Was that what you were trying to do?”

“Yes!” burst out Makalaurë, thrilled that his father seemed to know exactly how to react, though he had never thought to frame his passion for sound and structure in such calculating terms before. “Why does no one do it anymore?”

“Oh, topics and styles come in and out of favour like the waves lapping at the shore,” replied his father, drawing his leg up over his other knee and toying with one of his rings. “And you know how people argue, in their debate chambers and guild meetings and published reviews. Anything and everything gets interrogated, taken apart in every way you can anticipate, and some you can’t. And this particular style provoked a great deal of controversy – it was called stilted and unlovely, pompous and showy, lacking in emotion. It was argued that the entire point of poetry was connecting people, stirring up a shared emotional response, whether awe or joy or sadness or regret. And things got rather partisan – those who regretted the choice to leave Cuiviénen contended that this sort of shallow wordplay was a symptom of the idle stagnancy of paradise, that art was becoming a matter of hollow showmanship rather than anything unifying, reflecting the spirit of our people.”

“But I have heard it said outside Tirion,” countered Makalaurë, “that hollow showmanship is the spirit of our people.” 

His father laughed out loud then, the sound filling the room just as the golden light did.

“And anyway, they’re wrong,” Makalaurë pressed on. “Isn’t speech, aren’t words what unite all the Quendi? Isn’t that where we took our name from, what sets us apart from other living things? And haven’t words been one of our main focuses of study? Why should there be no joy in their shaping, and regret in their limitations?”

His father was smiling, and Makalaurë felt a surge of satisfaction, as if he had delivered a stirring speech before a vast hall of courtiers, rather than before his father in an enclosed room.

“I would certainly have wasted a considerable portion of my efforts if you were wrong,” said Fëanáro, smiling ruefully. “Yet I fear that such things as are the delight of the loremasters will be unlikely to stir the souls of the masses.”

Makalaurë hesitated, trying to decide if his father was paying him a compliment or criticizing him for falling short. 

“Have you ever tried it? That style of poetry?”

“I dabbled in it, naturally.” Fëanáro carelessly swept his hair back with one hand, as he was wont to do while speaking. “It was during at the height of my linguistic efforts, when I was still working out patterns in auditory representation. It seemed necessary to do so with a flourish.”

He turned to look at Makalaurë, and his smile promptly faded. “What is it?”

Makalaurë struggled to find the words for his disappointment. “Then it is merely a device. Like the rhymes they teach to children. Just something to exercise the mind in pursuit of more important things.”

“Did I say that?” demanded Fëanáro. He leaned forward. “It is the nature of a questing mind to seek many pursuits, and many means of relieving its restlessness. What of your mother? Smithcraft is such a diversion for her. Her only use of the forge is to air her frustrations with her other project. Does that make the pursuit itself unimportant? Unworthy of artistry?”

“No,” Makalaurë admitted.

“Of course not.” Fëanáro neatly folded the parchment into quarters and handed it back to him. “At any rate, you are far too young to be worried about such things. It is the privilege of a young mind to create unhindered, free of public scrutiny. Pursuing favour too early on will poison your enthusiasm. And criticism makes all men into vultures.” His eyes glinted almost mischievously at this last statement, and Makalaurë could not hold back a smile, feeling as if they stood on equal ground as artists, sharing a private insight.

“Yes, father,” he said.

His father gave him a kiss on the forehead, and he turned to open the door. The glow of the afternoon spilled in from the larger room, and Makalaurë turned and looked back to see his father already lost in thought, the light falling strangely over his profile.

***

Makalaurë grew, and the city grew alongside him; towers became higher, houses became more sprawling, and more and more paths wound down the hill of Tuna. Yet always, amidst the changes, shone the near-overwhelming whiteness of the city, the marble seemingly inflamed from Laurelin’s light. (There were some periods when he could only stand to look on it in the evening hours.) His voice developed as well, more and more powerfully flowing into and filling up his study, where he exhausted his hours of practice.

The barriers to approval that an artist faced, the labyrinthine avenues through which regard was won, were as sure as the brilliant walls and winding streets of the city itself. Song had always served many purposes, Makalaurë gathered from the historical accounts that he pieced together, but within the walls of Tirion, its purposes had become tied to certain buildings and locations – the concert hall, the festival stage, the courtyards. Makalaurë, as his training progressed, grew increasingly sensitive to acoustics, and drew up compositions intended specifically to fill up a certain space, as it would hardly do to stifle within the walls of a concert hall a song that was meant to dissolve into the free air and linger tantalizingly on the breezes. It was a tricky craft he had landed on – momentary, transient. Much of the musician’s life was anticipatory, mapping the timbre of his voice during practice onto how it would unfold on the stage. This sort of portentous approach would hardly have befitted the songs that had bound their people together on the Great Journey, those that were only made to fill the seemingly endless expanse between the sky and the earth. But Makalaurë had been born into a more calculating age.

Thus was Makalaurë’s mind occupied when he finally became eligible to follow in his elder brother’s footsteps, and petition for acceptance into Maitimo’s academic guild. For his bid, he prepared and presented a treatise that was titled _The Effects of Urban Development on Musicology_. It was an extensive review of compositional trends, establishment of venues, and generally held beliefs as to the role of music, spanning the history of the building of Tirion onwards. It was likely enough to stir the pot among those of differing loyalty to the Valar and their tutelage in craft, and, even amidst his trepidation, Makalaurë felt a flicker of amused anticipation.

Its delivery proved to be of little hardship for one with such a well-trained voice, and Makalaurë proved quite correct in his prediction of controversy – indeed, his argument spawned a long and intensive debate that lasted for nearly three times the length of the delivery. In the end, his bid was accepted, though to his dismay he was taken to task by his examiners for faulty organization and excessive esoterica.

“Cheer up!” said his brother, who had sat watcing the proceedings in silence, his eyes gleaming with a sharp precision of focus that Makalaurë was well accustomed to – although it had been disconcerting to him to see that expression directed at himself, perhaps especially for how easily Maitimo’s features had now slipped back into their warm familiarity. “They are primed to find fault in everything. The evaluation means very little. Didn’t you hear how long they talked? A novel and provocative argument has a much more lasting effect than formal perfection.”

Telperion was waxing, the light slowly thickening in its spread through the streets and over the marble buildings, and the cool evening breeze was a balm amidst the bustle in the streets. It was the sort of environment into which the day’s disappointments could dissipate into the silvery air; or, alternatively, Makalaurë considered, in which disappointments became all the more stark beneath the eternal inky black of the sky, which was barely visible through Laurelin’s harsher brightness. (More light, less light, which was more conducive to inner peace? Was it a mistake to abandon the cover of stars that had cherished them in their first awakenings, to cloak it in dazzle and haze? Thus the debate waxed and waned.)

“But it _felt_ right to me,” Makalaurë lamented. “The argument seemed whole and sound and impeccably crafted.”

“You are approaching argument and rhetoric with far too much of an artist’s sensibility, and an extraordinarily maudlin one at that.” Maitimo’s voice rang out through the dreamy glow, his ever-firm conviction veined with amusement. “But from that standpoint, perfection is an anti-artistic end. Things live and breathe through the chinks in their surfaces. Their flaws shed light on the driving passion behind them, the fascinating potential in their contradictions. Any aesthetic theorist you asked would acknowledge this.”

“But no artist wants that!” Makalaurë could not resist protesting, despite being wearied from the endless back-and-forth he had just been subjected to. “Imperfection may provide an additional interest to audiences; it might even be a near-inevitable result of creation. But it is still a failure, something to be avoided. And raw passion is distasteful in any work of art – passion must be shaped and polished as much as any gem. Otherwise, it is all too often a case of mawkish overexposure.”

“Then you have a heartless approach to art evaluation!” The light flickered uncertainly over Maitimo’s amused features.

“I am an artist. I evaluate as an artist. When I hear a piece of music, I can take it apart piece for piece, trace the composer’s intentions as if they were my own. And where there is a fault, it makes it all the easier for me to wriggle in and take the whole thing apart. The pieces that have impressed me the most were the ones in which I had no point of invasion, could not possibly conceive of doing what their composers had done. They were seamless. This is my goal, whenever I create. I want to make something with no breaks on its surface, something no light can get into.”

“You’ve lost your gem metaphor,” said Maitimo, grinning. “You must draw in light, if you hope to exude it.”

“But it is not so with music! A song is its own origin point, just as the Music in the beginning. It brings forth light entirely anew.”

“And we are straying from the topic now, and you are weary from arguing. I assure you, it is a dangerous habit to take up in one’s free time! Least of all as a substitute for celebrating.” Maitimo fondly took Makalaurë by the elbow. He later bought him a particularly potent ale, presenting it with an elder brother’s indulgence in alleged defiance of their parents (though neither would have been terribly troubled).

***

There was a fountain in the courtyard behind their house that had delighted Makalaurë as a small child, and he still, in moments of creative frustration, felt inexorably compelled to seek out. It had been a wedding gift to his parents from a group of Mahtan’s apprentices, and was shaped from polished granite, with water steadily bubbling out of the pedestal at the top and spilling in glistening sheets over the circular levels. But every now and then, it sprayed a powerful jet of water that produced a thick mist. When the light struck at a precise angle, a rainbow flickered across the droplets.

Remarkable, Makalaurë thought, how they had managed to build structures and systems to domesticate water and its music – perhaps an underappreciated testament to Noldor innovation.

And yet, those flickers of colour were skittish and ephemeral, breaking the metrical rhythm of the cascade of water. Not everything could be set in stone.

Hearing a noise, Makalaurë started. He turned to see his father striding towards him. Based on his plain work clothes and the unkempt state of his hair, he was clearly fresh from the forge. Perhaps it was already time for the evening meal, and his father had come to collect him? But it was rare for Fëanáro to personally come to fetch each of them, especially not for something so routine and mundane.

“Makalaurë.” His father stopped. It was gratifying to be given such an understated greeting; it was the way his father would greet another adult, a fellow craftsman. 

“What are you doing out here, Father?”

Fëanáro’s lips twitched into a smile. “I find that I need to move around after working for a long time. My father says I never outgrew my childhood restlessness.” He came over to stand behind the low bench that Makalaurë was leaning against. “And it seems you haven’t outgrown your tendency to stare at objects with moving parts. I remember that wind spinner you had as a baby that hung above your crib. Watching it rotate was the only thing that would keep you quiet.”

Makalaurë frowned slightly. This was not the dialogue of one craftsman to another.

“I am struggling, Father,” he said, with an intonation more formally prim than he would generally use with Fëanáro.

“Oh?” Fëanáro’s brows lifted in concern.

“A commission. It’s a wedding song. For a high-ranking member of our guild – mine and Nelyo’s – so it seemed prudent to accept. But you would think he would ask someone who was already married. As if I know anything about it!”

“It is a poor artist who cannot look outside his own experiences.”

“But it is such a tedious business,” Makalaurë complained, flicking his hair back. “It’s not _love_ I’m opposed to, at least as a concept. But there aren’t any _stakes_. There’s no _story_ to it. Anything you could sing about it would be dull and contrived. It would have the appearance of tension and catharsis, but there’s nothing challenging about it – not here.”

Fëanáro said dryly, “Some marriages have been quite controversial.”

“But even so, the wedding itself is a placating fantasy. The entire point of a wedding is to put on a veneer of tranquility, to paint a rose-coloured portrait of the situation and pretend that everybody is equally as thrilled as the happy couple. And at any rate, petty inter-house rivalries are hardly the stuff of great songs. Wedding songs are a merry bit of whimsy, but they’re not art. There’s nothing striking or moving about them. They don’t challenge. They don’t innovate. It’s like” – he gestured emphatically at the fountain – “it’s like this fountain. It’s the same water being churned through it, in an endless cycle. It gives the illusion of movement, but it is entirely stagnant. These weddings are all the same event, generation after generation.”

“But it is thus with everything.” Fëanáro had a habit of abruptly cutting in, which it had taken Makalaurë a long time to recognize as not necessarily indicating disagreement. “That is the consequence of our being here. Trading in danger and excitement alike for eternal serenity.”

The irony in his voice was not lost on Makalaurë.

“Fortunately,” continued his father, “there is more to what we do as artists than merely upholding this serenity. Just as the perseverance of our people has proven that there is more to be done with the Light than merely singing praises to it.”

“And that’s why I come here! Because of those flashes of colour in the mist, when the light hits just right. The flow of water has a music to it, as they say, that soothes me, but it’s those moments – that’s what I would like to capture in song. Find a technique that draws out that subtle effect of the light on the water, makes it linger as the piece proceeds.” Makalaurë let out a sigh, having exhausted his sudden enthusiasm. “Yet that too feels like a frustrating impossibility.”

“It’s my belief that every artist should have at least one impossible project,” his father replied. “Toy with it constantly, if only within your mind. And that is how you brace yourself through scrutiny and projects that are mere necessities.”

Makalaurë nodded reluctantly and resumed his steady gaze at the fountain, watching carefully for another brief bending of the light in the mist, those fleeting moments proof that not everything was eternal.

***

Makalaurë believed firmly that most artists, whatever their vocation, did not take the time to really break down their craft to its minute parts, and that the product as a whole suffered from it. He himself, in the making of songs, always took great to narrow down each narrative to its pivitol moments. And much later, in the name of isolating pivitol moments, he would remember one of their journeys in the far North, when his brothers had all opted to stop and rest for the night, and Makalaurë alone had ridden forth with his father to look, in the darkness, upon the Encircling Sea. 

Ekkaia… the name had a strange reverberation to his ear, as if echoing the sea’s breathtaking expansiveness. Never before had Makalaurë considered the tendency of the words of their language to taper off at the end, as if with a meaning and resonance beyond what the tongue could shape (and how different from the rigid and exact barriers upon which their works were built!). It was, perhaps, the taste of the name itself in his mouth, as much as the promise of the sea itself, that spurred him on. That, and the rare chance to be alone with his father.

They rode in silence, side by side, to the outer reaches of the forest. Here the path became rough and uneven, so they abandoned their horses and made the rest of the way on foot. They were at the furthest reaches of Telperion’s light, and it seemed to become more and more diluted as they progressed, its shine dulling to only a wispy hint of silver. The darkness that awaited them ahead was nearly as shocking, at first glance, as the pristine whiteness of Tirion. The black sheet of sky unfurled above them, stars shining resolutely in the absence of treelight. Makalaurë struggled to balance the distant but ever-growing sound of rushing water with the uneven crunching of their feet on the stony ground.

They advanced to the top of a ridge and the shoreline rose up in sharp relief, the sound of the water suddenly amplified. The waves rippled evenly in the distance, like a curtain billowing out an open window, but grew wilder up close, churning and frothing as they broke against the rocks. For a moment, all Makalaurë could do was stand and take it in; he had seen the sea before, by the quays of Alqualondë, but there it had felt as domesticated as the fountain in his father’s courtyard, built up with docks and dotted with ships and smaller pleasure boats as far as the eye could see. But here, the waves rolled in with a rhythm all their own, a song untuned for elven ears that had echoed across these shores for countless eons and that would endure till all the world had been worn down.

It was one of those moments that impressed upon Makalaurë how small his world was, and how inconsequential the boundaries and borders of Tirion were compared to this threshold between familiar territory and the primordial unknown. Here was the place where sound and texture seemed to merge together, just as the sea, stretching out into the distance, seemed to merge into the sky above, with the blackness of the unmade. And perhaps, then, not everything had been set down and bracketed off after all, perhaps there was more to bring forth, more songs swirling in the maelstrom beyond the walls of existence. Makalaurë, at that moment, became aware of the frustration that plagued his father, that drove him to tirelessly strive to greater and greater feats each day; yet he also felt hope, as new and wild as the sight before him. And this hope would not have been so sharp, so certain, if not for the presence of his father, standing utterly still and immoveable beside him, his bright eyes fixed on the sea with an expression that few had learned to read.

After a long moment, Fëanáro spoke, and his voice, though quiet, was clear and resonant against the rushing of the waves.

“It is said that some of the Avari who refused the Great Journey turned eastward instead of westward, into lands for which we have no maps. And perhaps some of them found the other side of the Encircling Sea, and are looking in our direction at this very moment.” 

Why, at this age, was it still so impossible for Makalaurë not to interpret his father’s musings as a test?

“Could it ever be possible to cross it?” he asked finally. Perhaps this was his father’s next journey, once he had exhausted every inch of Aman.

Fëanáro turned to look at him, a smile playing on his lips, and put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Possibility is relative. But whether or not anyone will…”

He trailed off and drew Makalaurë against the familiar warmth of his body, and they stood together as the foreign winds rippled about them and the stars, eternal beyond the treelight, shone evenly above. 

***

It was either a mercy or a cruelty that the stars were only unveiled afterwards.

The Unlight was swift in overwhelming them, clouding their vision and agitating their senses, and was slow to dissipate, such that even when the streets had cleared, there was a dark haze over the sky that smothered the stars. All the organizing and grueling marching was done by the light of lamps.

(Makalaurë was appalled by the ruin of Tirion. The city that had been built as a conduit of light seemed a hollow shell of itself, its brilliance deadened in the absence of the trees. It seemed inconceivable to him that anyone could choose to remain.)

There were certain things that would aid in the doing of unimaginable things – grief, terror, despair – but the cover of darkness could not be counted out. Beneath the dome of the blackened sky, there was something almost like shelter on the shores of Alqualondë, as if the dulling of the white sands in the darkness made their staining easier to bear.

(Perhaps that was the consequence for a people who had come to equivocate light with understanding.)

The dusky shadow that had clung to the sky must have been fading for a long time, but it was only when they were bearing the ships away, gliding down the shoreline at a reckless pace, still reeling from shock, that the stars seemed to burst into vision again, blazing and cold, and their deeds felt to them starkly illuminated. There were whispers that it was a judgment, and that perhaps the Valar were not as powerless in this as they seemed.

Makalaurë made no such speculations, but merely sat in numb silence. The brilliance of the stars captured all of his attention, such that even the violent rushing of the sea and the throbbing in his shoulder, where he had been grazed by an arrow, seemed to fade before their brilliance. For who would remember such trivial details later, in years to come, when the stars would outshine all of them? And who would have anticipated that Alqualondë, whose quays he had peacefully strolled upon with his parents and brothers, would become the greatest and least renounceable threshold yet?

It was a rare privilege, at least, to be able to see an ending, or a beginning, when it happened - to recognize it for what it was, rather than assembling the pieces in retrospect. And it was almost gratifying that the lack of light would cast a veil over what had befallen, so that in spinning out a story, he could only take forward with him what he would. For this was truly the role of a minstrel – to cast a piercing ray of light back into a shadowed moment, and illuminate things done in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fatalism-and-villainy on tumblr - come and say hi if you wish!


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